In Theaters

I love Bill Murray. We all do, don’t we? He can nearly do no wrong. Ok, he’s done a few movies he’d probably like to forget about, but let’s face it, even a bad Bill Murray movie is still pretty watchable. Remember Quick Change, or Larger Than Life, the one with the elephant? I know,…

I’ve loved Michael Keaton since junior high. Before Batman, and before he slept with Courtney Cox, he was mine. I sat in a theater watching Mr. Mom and about midway through, I started crying. It’s not a sad movie, in fact there’s not a sad part in it. But there was something about watching Michael…

Stuntmen David Leitch and Chad Stahelski’s revenge bloodbath John Wick seems to have been borne out of this concept: Take the best scene from The Matrix, distill it down to its essential elements, and make an entire movie out of that. Thus we have an incredibly stylish, stylized film that is almost entirely composed of…

Imagine a film where Leatherface meets Freddie AND Mike Myers, and others, and THEN they all go on a road trip in a Winnebago to a lake side resort, where tables are turned and they are terrorized for change! Smothered is that film. A funny indie horror film written and directed by Superman’s Dad, Dukes…

If Captain America: The Winter Soldier is a spy film, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is a chick flick. I’ve seen this movie twice. You might be thinking, “I remember you tweeting that you didn’t like it that much the first time and yet…”? Yes, but think about it. If I hadn’t seen this I’d have to see some ADULT film. Now, it’s been out two weeks so I should be able to vent and celebrate and all that without anyone freaking out, right? There’s spoilers coming up is what I’m saying.

I’d gone to the multiplex to see Captain America: Winder Solider, which I really enjoyed. I had a little more time to kill so I went to see Divergent because it was the movie that was starting next. Yes, I paid twice. I’m a ComedyFilmNerd, and we hold ourselves to high standards. I hadn’t heard anything about it, so I had zero expectations.

At a slender 97 minutes, Filth, adapted faithfully from Irvine Welsh’s terrific 1998 novel, is 95 minutes too long. From the opening monologue by James McAvoy’s Bruce Robertson, decrying Scotland as the place that gave the world “deep fried Mars Bars,” you know you’re in terrible hands all around. Not only has that gag dated, so has the entire world these characters populate. Yet the film is set in the here and now, and its characters’ attitudes have moved from humorously cutting-edge to deeply offensive.

Once upon a time, in the galaxy far, far away, there was the Australian television network landscape of my boyhood. Hard to believe now, this consisted of a mighty four selections; three commercial networks and the government one. In these pre-cable, let alone pre-internet, days, those networks showed movies. A lot of movies. And movies spanning all decades and many continents. In fact, the television landscape of my boyhood, as seemingly limited as it was, was a great film school.